Olfa Arfaoui ~ Sukūn سكون ــْ

“I grew up between two cemeteries: the Jewish cemetery and the martyrs’ cemetery. These cemeteries are what remain from the battles of Bizerte, Tunisia, in 1943 and 1961.

The past has never ceased to exist. The past is haunting. The past is present.

Sukūn is silence: the nothingness that triggers movement. Sukūn is a personal journey, an experimental back and forth between the history of wars and oral memories.

Jraynya (music female ensemble) becomes the sonic musicality of bombs, while Gynarya (tunnels) evokes the souterrain's  anti-nuclear bases, where fear, memory, and spectral sound continue to resonate.

Through archival fragments, personal footage, voice narration, and landscape footage, this unperformed and unsettled body of work explores how collective erasure operates through silence, and how sound can become a keeper of memory. Collective songs emerge as haunted carriers, resisting disappearance across generations.”

Olfa Arfaoui's Sukūn سكون ــْ will be presented to a live audience at Centrale Fies (Dro, Italy) on June 20, 2026 as one of 41 acts curated by Elisa Giuliano for the AEROPONIC ACTS 2026: DAWN SEEDS, convened by Gabriëlle Schleijpen for the Dutch Art Institute.

For those unable to attend in person, this page will host future video documentation by Baha Görkem Yalım alongside a written report by Saverio Cantoni. The report will feature summarized reflections from guest respondents Adam Hajyahia, Antonia Majaca, and Zairong Xiang, who will vibe with the question: “What would it take to hear the (un)silence?”

We look forward to welcoming you in person to Dro!